


Can't Open Up My Heart Without A Care

by take_liberties



Category: Disney RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/take_liberties/pseuds/take_liberties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's been a lot of rumors lately that I'm dating one of my best friends Joe. I can promise my entire career that I am not.<br/>28 minutes ago from mobile web</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Open Up My Heart Without A Care

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cashewdani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/gifts).



> Thanks and love to my betas, who totally made this fic what it is.

Falling back into things with Demi might be the easiest, most natural thing Joe has ever done. After performing with her in Toronto he’d had this surge of adrenaline and hormones, and that was on top of the perpetual adrenaline high he‘d been riding for two months on the road. So when he arrived on set, he was already hoping things would go this way. And then Kevin was stressing out with the wedding planning, and Nick was in constant business meetings to plan the Administration’s tour schedule and David-Ryan-Harris-can’t-tour-oh-no-we-need-a-new-guitar-player, so the only person he really cared to be around most of the time was Demi anyway.

 

They never bothered having a talk to define things; it all just fell back into place like the first time around. And anyway, Joe didn’t feel the need to have a conversation about relationships when it was just as easy, without saying anything, to put a hand on the small of her back when they had to get through a crowd, and to buy two tickets as soon as he found out Michael Buble was playing in town, and to sneak into her hotel room just after sunrise one morning when the night shoots were finally wrapped and it felt like they hadn’t slept in days.

 

But all of that is ending now. Demi has to go back to filming _Sonny_, and Joe is leaving for a month in Europe, and maybe it wasn’t such a good idea not to define things because they’re going to be apart and then this won’t be as easy. There’s nothing accidental and natural about a long distance relationship.

 

Joe’s putting it off, though, and he figures that if he goes to visit her the morning after they get back to LA from Canada it will be like nothing has changed, like the two months of stability and normality and sameness can continue. And maybe he’ll get a goodbye kiss; that would be nice.

 

And he does. He gets a goodbye kiss and a little more. He’s thinking that the feeling of her tongue moving against his is the greatest feeling in the world. But then he undoes her third shirt button and thinks that this silky soft patch of skin just below the lace of her bra might feel even better. And all of that is nothing, he thinks a second after that, compared to the feeling of her fingernails grazing the skin below his bellybutton, her fingertips hooking themselves into the waistband of his boxers. And then it’s time to stop thinking and just kiss her.

 

***

 

He’s on some island in the Caribbean the next time they talk. It’s like every other Caribbean island he’s been to, so he’s not especially bothered to learn the name until tomorrow night before he gets on stage. There are other things he’d rather be thinking about.

 

He’s pretty pleased when he gets a text from Demi that just says _ichat?_, so he gets online and sends her a video request, but it takes her a long time to respond to it. She finally writes _one sec, in the middle of something_ and when her video feed turns on a few seconds later, he can see her dressing room on set. Mostly he sees her shoulder, but he can tell she’s looking at something off camera, over to the side, and behind her Sterling’s barely containing a laugh, looking in the same direction.

 

“No, Tiffany. He’s right. College Station doesn’t even sound like a real place. Now seriously, _leave_.” Demi’s half-laughing, but trying to sound exasperated. Sterling laughs and walks off-camera. Joe can hear Tiffany in the background saying she’s going to ask someone who doesn’t have a Colt McCoy poster in his dressing room.

 

Demi turns her attention to the computer.

 

“Hey, I have to tell you something.” She says, almost eagerly. “It’s about Perez Hilton.” Joe’s happiness at seeing her turns into annoyance when she says this. “He’s saying you spent the night when you came over the other morning. That we’re officially together.”

 

‘Officially together’ when they’re about to be officially really far apart for a month. That’s _stupid._

 

Joe wonders, sometimes, what it’s like to try to figure out whether you’re ‘officially together’ with a girl without Perez Hilton wondering along with you. They talk about the potential complications for awhile, and whether they should do anything about this, especially since it isn’t even true. He doesn’t really have an answer for her, so he shrugs and goes to his default answer for these things.****

 

**“**Don’t worry, Dem. It’ll blow over.” He wonders if he managed to sound like he believed it.

 

Of course, it doesn’t blow over. It feels like all the old rumors are being recycled, and every gossip blog is reporting the same old stories from the first movie, and Joe doesn’t understand how it could possibly still interest anyone. He wishes he _had_ slept over, if everyone was going to believe it anyway, why bother sneaking around?

 

Having a private life is becoming one of the hardest things ever.

 

***

 

He tries to avoid all the gossip sites after that, but the publicist thinks they need to know the basics. So he gets a rundown from her every morning, a digest version of what a few thousand people have been saying about his personal life on the internet.

 

It’s annoying, but it’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with before. And besides, who cares what’s happening on the internet when he gets to go shopping all over Europe? In Milan he buys an awesome silver-gray jacket, and he decides to wear it for as long as possible, he’ll wear it to the EMAs and then on the flight from Berlin to Turin, and then he might sleep in it. It depends on how the night goes.

 

*******

Joe’s still wired from the awards show and the birthday cake, and he doesn’t want to hear Nick talking about Katy Perry’s glow anymore, so he turns on his laptop hoping to talk to Demi a little.

 

Private jets with Wi-Fi might be Joe’s favorite thing. He wants to find whoever thought of putting wi-fi on a plane and, like, make him some fish tacos, hug him, give his teenage daughter meet and greet passes. This last thought only begins to formulate in his head before he realizes how lame it sounds, how ridiculous it is that the best gift he could think of to give someone is a chance to meet himself. He never really understood celebrity before all this, and he still doesn’t. It makes even less sense from this side of things. It’ll have to be the fish tacos.

 

Demi’s online and he sends her a chat request, but when her video feed turns kicks in he can see that she looks miserable. He thinks she might have been crying.

 

“Is everything okay? Madison?” He jumps to the worst conclusions, so it’s almost a relief when she smiles a little and shakes her head.

 

“No, no, nothing like that,” she says, “We have to talk, though,” and then she starts telling him some story about their relationship being leaked. She has to remind him who Zack Taylor is and this story is getting pretty long and boring, and he doesn’t get how it’s different from all of the other blogs ‘confirming’ their ‘relationship.’ And to be perfectly honest she’s starting to remind him a little of Miley and her obsession with gossip bloggers.

 

Then she starts on something about her mother getting involved and it looks like she might start crying again and he feels like he has to jump in, say something.

 

“It’s not just your family. My mom’s been doing all these interviews. She accidentally let slip about Nick’s album. And, you know, she actually did that. No one made it up. We had to announce it a month early, fast track all the publicity-” he’s rambling, trying to find a way to actually relate it to Demi’s situation, when she cuts him off.

 

“That’s totally different, Joe. This is different.” She keeps using his name. She sounds disappointed. “This guy is personally attacking my mother; he’s making up text messages, faking screencaps. It’s completely messed up.”

 

“Well, forget him. Ignore it. It’s not worth your time getting involved.” He can tell that nothing he’s saying is helping, but he doesn’t want to deal with this, and he wishes she didn’t either. “You don’t have to respond to him, just let it go.”

 

 “Okay, Joe. Whatever. I’ll take care of it. Have a good flight.” She disconnects almost immediately without even waving goodbye. He wishes he could help somehow, but he knows he can’t. The Jonas publicity machine is a lot tighter than Demi’s, so even if he wanted to get involved, it would get shot down. He really prefers it this way anyway; he doesn’t understand how anyone could get a kick out of arguing with bloggers on Twitter.

 

He turns off his laptop, and his phone is off because they’re in the air, and he doesn’t even think about what she meant by ‘take care of it.’ So he’s spared from feeling his heart drop into his stomach for another half-hour until they land and he turns on his phone to find four tweets in his inbox.

***__

_There's been a lot of rumors lately that I'm dating one of my best friends Joe. I can promise my entire career that I am not._ __

_28_ _ minutes ago from mobile web_

_We've NEVER dated. He's incredible, but we don't have feelings for each other in that way. I love you guys, and I wouldn't lie about that._ __

_27 minutes ago_ _ from mobile web_

_It's unfortunate that some people out there are so desperate for attention that they have to make up gossip to keep their site alive._ __

_25 minutes ago_ _ from mobile web_

_But that's how this whole city works I guess. It just makes me sad that people are that mean in this world._ __

_24_ _ minutes ago from mobile web_ __

 

***

He doesn’t talk to her the next day because they have a show, which means press, and meet and greet, and sound check, and on top of that they have to film something for Living the Dream at the Olympic Stadium. Who even knew there was an Olympic Stadium in Turin? He spends a lot of time that day thinking about how he missed the whole 2006 Olympics because they were touring with _It’s About Time_. Reminiscing about playing, actually _playing,_ pop-punk in tiny, half-full bars helps keep his mind off Demi.

 

Still, he feels like he’s been punched in the chest every time he thinks about the words _“I can promise my entire career.”_ Demi’s almost as serious about her career as Nick is – _almost_, and now he wishes they hadn’t avoided defining things, now that she’s promising the whole world that there’s nothing there, setting the stakes so high. After the way things ended last night he’s not so sure who exactly those tweets were meant for.

 

The next day after that he doesn’t even have to try to avoid her. He hasn’t seen Nick this ill since…well, since the diagnosis, and he doesn’t want to think about that. They have to cancel a show for the first time ever, and this Swiss interviewer is being a real dick about the rings, so Demi’s the last thing on his mind. She actually is, and that worries him a little when he realizes it later.

 

After that, they have a few days off in Spain and he starts hanging out with that girl Andrea he met at the DC Games last year. She’s pretty chill. And he feels a little bad about it, but, you know, they never really defined things and there had been Dirk Mai back in September, so he doesn’t want to waste a lot of time on feeling bad. One night Andrea leans in to peck him goodbye on the lips. He’s not about to invite her in to his room, but he doesn’t exactly discourage her either. Andrea’s a pretty good kisser, her lips are soft, and she’s putting her hands on him, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking about the flush on Demi’s face and the little gasp in the back of her throat when he’s doing this with her instead, so he says good night. And it still hurts to think about Demi, but that's what he finds himself doing anyway.

 

Ten minutes later he’s in the shower with the water pounding on his back and with the blush, and the gasp, and the arch of Demi’s back still on his mind.

 

Demi texts him a couple of times, but they never seem urgent and he still feels sick when he thinks about the tweets, so he doesn’t really engage her. Instead he just texts back the bare minimum to keep her from getting angry and stays off his computer as much as he can. It’s pretty easy avoiding her; touring in Europe has always been more hectic than the U.S. There are more things they want to see and do, better shopping, more fans trying to get pictures and autographs. And before he knows it they’re in Paris and it’s over.

***

After he gets back to L.A., things are busy with the big move, the bachelor party, filming at Disney World, a couple of shows, and Christmas party planning with the new roomies and it’s good that he’s still keeping busy and hasn’t had a chance to see Demi because he’s still not sure where things stand between them. And because he’s still not sure, he’s _really_ not sure how she ended up being invited over to help decorate, or why Garbo and Jack had to go on a mysterious shopping trip right before she’s supposed to show up. Garbo winks at him on the way out, though, and he comes up with a theory.

 

Demi must have rung the doorbell with her nose, because when he opens the door she’s holding the biggest box of Christmas decorations he has ever seen, and that’s impressive since his mom doesn’t mess around when it comes to Christmas decorations. The box has the added benefit of preventing a hello hug, which, the way things are, might have been a little awkward.

 

She brings the box in and puts it in the middle of the living room, and they open it up and start digging through it together. Joe immediately puts on some reindeer antlers and then starts unwinding a tinsel garland to drape somewhere.  They lapse into a comfortable silence, decorating the room together, giggling occasionally when some ridiculous decoration like a ceramic Santa wearing a sombrero and shades comes out of the box. There are still things they need to say to each other, but Joe feels like friendship is what they need right now and other conversations can come later.

 

“MISTLETOE!” Joe yells excitedly when the box is half empty, pulling out two fistfuls of sprigs. “There’s enough for an army. An army of…kissing people. I’m gonna go figure out where to put it all.” Demi’s alone for fifteen minutes before he comes back empty-handed.

 

He’s in a pretty great mood, thinking about the mistletoe he put over the mirror in the bathroom, until she clears her throat like she wants to talk about something. He’s been dreading this, but he knows it had to come eventually.

 

“I know you’re mad,” her voice is uncharacteristically quiet, and she’s not looking at him. She’s focused on an ornament, trying to slip it onto a tree branch, “but it wasn’t the first time we’ve denied anything, and it won’t be the last.”

 

“I know. I know you had to…it was just the way you did it.” He doesn’t want to stand here accusing her of anything while she’s trying to make peace, so he says, “I get it, though.” He’s trying to get over it, but it still hurts.

 

“Well, I didn’t really have a choice, did I?” she asks, sounding a little defensive. “I couldn’t sit there and watch everyone on Twitter asking me what was going on, watching him make up lies-”

 

“They weren’t _all_ lies.” He cuts her off, because he really, really hopes they weren’t.

 

“Most of them were. You didn’t even see what he was saying.” Her voice is rising now. “And anyway, I did it for you.”

 

“For me?” He’s incredulous. “You swore on your career that you didn’t have feelings for me as a favor or something?”

 

“Yeah. I did.” She says. She’s looking up at him now, sincere and almost sad. “I really meant that, you know. It’s worth everything, my whole career, to keep them out.”

 

And suddenly those words he’s been sick over for weeks have a new meaning, and the last month feels like a huge misunderstanding. He can’t do anything but grab her and pull her into a hug, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and planting his lips into her hair. Her body relaxes, melts into his, and she buries her face in his chest. They stand like that forever, until he loosens his grip enough to actually say something to her.

 

“Come on,” he says, running his hand down her arm to thread his fingers into hers. “Let me show you all the places I hung the mistletoe.”


End file.
